Sep 26, 2018 Windows PC and Mac use different filesystems. The Windows uses NTFS and Mac uses HFS. They are incompatible with each other. So, if you want to use an external hard drive on both Windows and Mac, you need to format it to a filesystem that is compatible with Windows PC and Mac. Both FAT32 and exFAT can be used on Windows PC and Mac. If you’re lucky, you can just right-click each partition on the Mac drive and select Delete Volume to remove the partitions. You can then right-click in the empty space and select New Simple Volume to create a partition and format it with the Windows NTFS or FAT32 file systems. The Mac drive may have an “EFI System Partition” on it. Apr 22, 2012 How to Format a Drive for Mac & PC Compatibility. Well So I’m running Mac OS X El Capitan and Windows 10 using BootCamp on my 2015 MacBook Air 13″ and I wanted a disk where I could put something in from the Mac and then reboot into Windows and take out that file. Mar 12, 2018 Want to format a hard drive for Mac and PC compatibility? You have to set it up correctly before getting starting. Mac OS Journaled is the formatting option for Mac and NTFS or MS-Doc is the.
If you have an external hard drive or USB flash drive that you’d like to use on both Macs and Windows PCs, choosing the right file system to format the drive can be confusing. https://cleverexclusive316.weebly.com/blog/lexmark-printer-drivers-for-mac. Learn a few ways to make your drive Mac and PC friendly.
Need to access or transfer files between Mac and PC? As simple as this task sounds, it’s not very straightforward for inexperienced users. Since Mac OS X and Windows use totally different file systems, the way a drive is formatted can determine what type of computer it will work with. In fact, there are four ways you can format an external or USB flash drive to achieve varying degrees of compatibility between Macs and PCs. Let’s take a look at them:
HFS+
Mac OS X’s native file system is HFS+ (also known as Mac OS Extended), and it’s the only one that works with Time Machine. But while HFS+ is the best way to format drives for use on Macs, Windows does not support it. If you’re only going to be using your external or USB flash drive with certain PCs – such as at home or the office – you might be interested in a program called MacDrive. When you install MacDrive on a Windows PC, it will be able to seamlessly read & write to HFS+ drives. Photo editing software for mac free download. This isn’t a good solution if you need your drive to work on any PC without installing software, though.
NTFS
Best Format For Mac And Pc
The native Windows file system is NTFS, which is only partially compatible with Mac OS X. Macs can read files on NTFS drives, but it cannot write to them. Toaster titanium for mac. So if you need to get files from a PC to your Mac, NTFS is a decent option. However, you won’t be able to move files in the other direction, from Mac to PC.
FAT32
The most universally supported way to format your drive is with the FAT32 file system. It works with all versions of Mac OS X and Windows. Case closed, right? Well, not so fast. Unfortunately, FAT32 is a very old file system and has some technical limitations. For example, you cannot save files that are larger than 4GB on a FAT32-formatted drive. This is a deal-breaker if you work with huge files. The other limitation is the total size of the partition. If you format your FAT32 drive in Windows, the drive partition cannot be larger than 32GB. If you format it from a Mac running 10.7 Lion, the drive partition can be up to 2TB. Much better, except for that pesky 4GB limit. Best music downloader for macbook air.
exFAT
Disk Format For Mac And Pc
The exFAT file system eliminates the two major deficiencies of FAT32: the largest partition and file sizes it supports are virtually unlimited by today’s standards. Awesome, it’s perfect! Almost… since exFAT is fairly new, it isn’t compatible with older Macs and PCs. Any Mac running 10.6.5 (Snow Leopard) or 10.7 (Lion) supports exFAT, while PCs running Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista SP1, and Windows 7 are compatible. If you know you’ll be using computers running updated versions of these operating systems, exFAT is the clear best choice.
Format a drive using Disk Utility on a Mac
Launch Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities).
Select your external hard drive or USB flash drive from the list on the left.
Click on the Erase tab. Select the format – Mac OS Extended (HFS+), MS-DOS (FAT32), or exFAT – then name the drive.
Click the Erase button and the drive will start formatting. Be aware that formatting a drive deletes all of the files on it, so back up anything important before completing this step.
Format a drive using Windows
Go to Computer (or My Computer in Windows XP).
Select your drive from the list and right-click on it. Choose Format from the contextual menu.
A window will pop up where you can choose the format – NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT. Make sure the allocation unit size is set to default and type in a volume label.
Click Start to format the drive.
Macs and PCs use different file systems, which can make it tricky to put data from your Mac on a flash or hard drive and give it to a Windows user. Tricky, but not impossible. Here’s how:
Insert the flash drive or hard drive you want to format for Windows compatibility. Go to the Applications folder on your Mac’s hard drive, then go to the Utilities folder, and launch Disk Utility.
Select the drive you want to format. Warning: the following steps will delete any info you currently have on the drive.
Click the Erase button.
Click the Format menu, then choose either MS-DOS (FAT) or ExFAT.Choose the former if the size of the disk is 32 GB or less. Choose the latter if the size of the disk is over 32 GB.
Enter a name for the volume (no more than 11 characters).